I Can't Stop Thinking!

#6 Great cartoon about filesharing.

Bumperball

Fun game

LEAP YEAR

February 29: "The original Roman 355 day calendar had an extra 22-day month every few years
to maintain the correct seasonal changes. By the time Julius Caesar took
reign, the seasons no longer occurred during the same months they once had.
Panicking, he remedied this in 44 B.C. by tossing the extra month and adding
the extra day to a few months instead. He threw in a month in honor of
himself (Julius-- July) and died a happy man having solved the calendar woes.
Not quite. Still creating seasonal confusion, the calendar was again changed,
first from an extra day every 3 years, to one every 4 years in 8 A.D. It was
then finally perfected with some complicated logic by Pope Gregory XIII in
1582 (who predicted Easter and Christmas would eventually fall on top of each
other without his divine intervention). He determined that Leap Day should
fall on any year divisible by 4 but not 100 (except when the year is
divisible by 400), setting up a calendar nearly identical to that of Mother
Nature. Thus, today our year is 365.2425 days, off from our solar year by
.00031, or one day's error over 4,000 years. "

Turn a drawing into a work of art

Scribbler

A Day of Mourning

Papers, Please!: "Sensenbrenner ID Graphic
National ID Legislation Passes

Tuesday May 10th 2005 is the day that future historians will note as The Day America Changed. On this date, the Senate of the United States of America passed legislation that will bring about a national ID card. President G. W. Bush is expected to sign the bill on May 12th 2005. The national ID card scheme will take three years to implement."

No! No! No! No! No! This is all wrong! We are supposed to be living in a FREE society!!!

Apple de-socializes iTunes

The Register: "Bit by bit, Apple is tightening the DRM noose, reducing the amount of freedom its own customers enjoy. Last year, the company cut the number of times users could burn a playlist from ten to seven. This time, Apple has chosen to cripple one of its coolest and most socially beneficial technologies - Rendezvous.

Apple actually applied the restriction two months ago, but the passage of time hasn't made it any sweeter. In iTunes, Rendezvous allows users on the same subnet to share their music - although this is limited to streaming only. But the most recent version of iTunes, 4.7.1, restricts that streaming capability even further, and users aren't happy, as this support discussion shows. It used to support five simultaneous listeners, but now iTunes only permits five listeners a day.

Of course, Apple has its defenders, as it always will. 'No one is forcing anyone to upgrade,' fumes one 'henryblackman' at the MacNN forum, irked that someone should should disturb his digital bliss. But they did - and using a security scare to foist an upgrade on users that's really a downgrade is, well how shall we put it - familiar?

Let's have a quick reality check.

If you opened up iTunes, turned up the volume really loud on your Mac, and hit Play, you could 'stream' to five people within earshot. And no one would bust down the door, except possibly the neighbors. Certainly not the RIAA's paramilitaries.

Now fast forward to the 'digital music revolution'. The revolution is really about lower marginal costs for the producers - which is turning out to mean higher profits, as the price hasn't come down. For us, it means we get less for our faith - in this case, certainly much less than what old fashioned, speaker to ear, analog sound waves can give us.

Once again, 'digital' is proving to be a synonym for 'crap'."

Common sense?

"
Via Blogged IT News:On yahoo’s music help site. they have described how to get around DRM so that you can listen to music purchased through yahoo on an iPod.

[…]

Buy and download your burnable song from Yahoo! Music Unlimited
Burn it to a CD
Import the song from the CD using the Yahoo! Music Engine (Yahoo! Music Engine imports in MP3 as the default format. AAC encoding is available as well.)
That newly imported song will be in MP3 format and now you can upload it to your iPod.”

[…]

So here’s my question, if they are telling you to take your protected music and unprotect it, why don’t they just sell it that way in the first place?

Good question."

Philosophical Quotes

Welcome to The Quote Garden!
Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop. ~Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland

There's more to the truth than just the facts. ~Author Unknown

Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth. ~Ludwig Börne

If a man who cannot count finds a four-leaf clover, is he lucky? ~Stanislaw J. Lec

The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer. ~Edward R. Murrow

Digital Copyrights

:: LAPTOP Magazine: "TiVo is currently exploiting a gap that exists between the Sony-Betamax decision and the DMCA. It is what is often referred to as 'the analog hole.' It means that you can have fair use of any video as long as it is in analog form." Go TiVo!!!

elgooG

(: !siht ees ot tog evah uoY

Kiss your old SSN goodbye

Tech News on ZDNetYes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! This is the right track to be on.

Free TiVo: Build a Better DVR out of an Old PC

MakeZine.com: "Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) have become a necessary luxury over the last several years. Millions of people rely on these devices to pause and rewind live television, and to keep track of broadcast schedules and record programs for them. Many consider them just as essential to their daily lives as their cell phones.

Several months ago, I finally became sufficiently jealous of the millions of DVR owners to motivate me to put a DVR in my own living room. But I wanted something more versatile than a normal TiVo, ReplayTV, or Ultimate TV system. I envisioned an all-purpose media server that would function as a full DVR, but would also work as a music server and play console games. It would have an easy remote-control interface, just like a commercial DVR, and a way to program it through the internet. Finally, I wanted to avoid the monthly fees that many DVR owners pay to keep their machines' schedules up-to-date."

The Constitution of the United States of America

"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

InternetFrog.com

Test Your Connection Speed

Battle On, Dude!

Adventure Quest RPG: "AdventureQuest is a free, lunch-break-sized RPG that you can play daily using your web browser. We are adding new things every week! Join us in shaping the direction of this campy yet addictive role playing game. Create a free account and play!"